


in your hands each night

by ennaih (aquandrian)



Category: Bloodline (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fic Exchange, First Time, POV First Person, Recreational Drug Use, So much angst, i hate this fkn family so much, i know nothing about Florida
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 21:33:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9032060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquandrian/pseuds/ennaih
Summary: He is the walking wounded and I must not get involved with him.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [onstraysod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onstraysod/gifts).



> A Christmas fic exchange with onstraysod where we each nominate a character played by Ben Mendelsohn and the other writes fic, non-Jynnic, about that character.
> 
> Merry Christmas, my fellow MendHo! I'm sorry about the supreme amount of angst but you know what he's like. Thank you for being my enabler in all rabid creative Mendo lust! So grateful we found each other in the chaos of Tumblr! <3
> 
> Title from _Sable On Blond_ by Stevie Nicks. Because non-Jynnic fic requires a non-Nick Cave lyric title.

_just how deep do you hold that dream / in your hands each night / this time_

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That guy keeps turning in his seat to look around. Not at me, past me, down the aisle. It keeps freaking me out. Like what the fuck is he actually looking at? I don’t care, I don’t care. Huddle down in my seat, shoulder against the glass and watch the blue skies and blue ocean fly past. Earbuds in deep, Stevie Nicks blocking out all the conversation along the bus. Am I happy? Check in every six hours, am I happy in this thing I am doing? Have I monumentally fucked up?

He turns again. The sunlight diffused through the tinted glass gleams the contour of his cheekbone and catches the red uneven curve of his lips. Fuck, I’m staring at his mouth. But he doesn’t notice me, and now I can keep glancing back. He’s across the aisle, a few rows up. There’s something unbearably sad about his face, maybe it’s the lines around his mouth. The weird tenderness of his lashes. I’m fixating, aren’t I? I can feel it. Am I lonely? Yes. God, yes. Ten days on the road, on this journey to somewhere -- nowhere? -- and I haven’t spoken to a single person except to check in or order food. Aren’t you supposed to make friends on these trips? God, I’m such a loser. But no, no, I am absolutely not going back yet.

They’ll be pottering around in the garden now, wondering aloud and amiably what I’m doing today. I’ve been so good sending back postcards from every place I’ve stopped, dropping landmark names and reporting on my meals, being the good daughter. But I am not, not going back yet. Even if I’m fucking miserable and why did I even start this eat pray love shit? 

The bus hiccups and comes to a slow stop. Everyone is peering over or around their seats, I can’t hear people asking what’s wrong but they must be. Let them panic for me. Earbuds still in, I glance across to the guy. He’s not paying them any attention, staring instead at a few ragged sheets of yellow lined paper in his hands. God, he looks so distraught. Trust me to find one person in the world more miserable than me. Ha.

Too amused, I look up to where the bus driver has gotten out of his seat and is saying something to us all. Oh yeah, music. 

“-- stretch your legs. We’ll be back on the road in about ten minutes. Hopefully.”

The breeze is hot and sticky, the blue water glittering painful in the distance. I walk a little away from the people talking amongst themselves. Maybe they all have their own interesting stories, their own little worlds of angst and joy like me. But right now I’m not interested. (Have I ever been?) I sit on the scrubby gravel of the verge, stretching my legs out, perversely happy to get my black jeans dusty. The sun blazes down from the perfect blue sky onto my exposed nape, through the thin blue material of my top. It’ll be good to get to the motel tonight, to have a shower and sleep on a hopefully decent mattress, so far from my own room with all my stuff and my own bed.

Maybe when I get back, I’ll be a whole different person. That was the idea, wasn’t it? And maybe it’s naive of me -- more eat pray love bullshit -- but I’m still clinging to that hope, that little delusion. Travel’s supposed to change you. Will it?

He’s a smoker. Suddenly there, a few feet away, tall and untidy against the blue sky. He bends his head and his hair glints so much silver in grey brown. I watch, unashamed, as he lights the cigarette and tips his face back, blowing the smoke out against the blue. A stab of lust in the pit of my stomach, oh yes there it is. Because of course I’m disgusted by smoking but he makes it look so fucking cool and I’ve always been schizoid like that. He is death, poison in his lungs, black crawling up the inside of his throat. 

“Can I have one?”

His eyes are blue, startled and immediately wary. I keep my smile neutral. Try not to scare the humans. Without a word, he offers me the pack, the tapped cigarette jutting out. I know he’s looking me over, I’m aware of the breeze blowing through my flimsy top, aware that there’s a pretty nice hint of cleavage showing. “Light?” I ask and he leans down. I look up into his face with a thousand freckles across weathered skin, and his eyes are so very clear and perfectly prettily shaped, a sort of stealthy intelligence in the way he watches me breathe in, the cigarette end glowing orange. 

I don’t smoke. So of course there’s much coughing and spluttering and a total destruction of all erotic tension. When I recover, he’s watching me with his head tilted, his expression pure bemusement. Eyes streaming with tears, I wave the cigarette in his direction. “Thanks. It’s been a while.”

“Uh huh.”

The thing tastes absolutely foul and I have no intention of finishing it. So I tuck it under the heel of my boot, glancing up to where he’s staring moodily out at the sky and distant sea. The bus is making unhappy noises behind us. Draping my earbuds around my neck, I say casually, “So are you heading to, to -- of course you are, sorry.” He flicks me a look, startlingly elegant with the light gleaming off the high point of his cheekbone and down the sharp line of his nose. “Holiday?” I ask, determined not to be intimidated.

He grimaces, nostrils flaring with something like contempt. I remember the yellow papers, that air of utter brokenness about him. “No,” he says, pinching the cigarette between two fingers and drawing in the smoke. “Going home.” His mouth twists as he glances down at the gravel, the breeze ruffling his hair. It’s so wild and unruly, much longer than it probably should be. “Home to my --”

He stops abruptly, I get this narrow look, so weirdly appealing because he’s so beautiful and suspicious.

“I’m on holiday,” I inform him, playing the carefree tourist. “Travelling this great country sort of thing.”

“Oh yeah?” He shifts on his feet, his shoulders broad under the muddy dark shirt. “Where’ve you been so far?”

The names rattle off my tongue, making me sound so sophisticated and successful, everything I’m not. He watches me, unsmiling, his eyes bright and moving ever so subtly across my face, down my body. He hasn’t telegraphed it yet but I know.

“And now I’m doing Florida!” I beam up at him, aware that my smiles don’t reach my eyes at all. 

“Oh yeah,” he drawls, a sort of slyness around his eyes and creeping into his tone. “What are you running from?”

I am actually speechless for a few moments, stricken by his insolence. And he knows he’s hit home. A gleaming little smile, the curling mouth. My skin crawls, and I can’t even tell if it’s revulsion or more lust or both.

But somehow my pride rescues me. Somehow I’m speaking past the shock and tumult. “What do you think?”

He comes down to one knee beside me, his shoulder sharp under the loose shirt, elbow propped on that knee. His trousers are the same shabby dark material, frayed in a spot. Now I’m noticing all the signs of a man struggling to make ends meet. It’s not just that he’s careless or bohemian. Or am I reading too much into everything as usual?

“Let’s see, you’re what, twenty something?”

“Thirty,” I say shortly.

“Right,” he drawls it slower, enjoying this. “Then definitely running away from home, your first trip. Road trip? With the permission of the parentals?” A drag on the cigarette, bright grey blue eyes flicking to my mouth. “First time out of home, and you’re going as far as you can as fast as you can.”

“I have to go back though, don’t I?” 

I had said it without thinking, instinctive, but the way his expression changes makes me stop. Like I’ve scented blood. His eyes hood, that darkness coiling around him like so much dirty smoke. 

“How long have you been away?” I ask softly, feeling like there’s nobody in the great dark world but us. Here on the side of the freeway with the sun beating down and the mangroves spreading way behind us, so much history and danger dragging us down. Mangroves tangle through water in my head as I look at him, and suddenly I’m afraid for him.

“Long enough.” His mouth is a hard line now. “Not nearly long enough.”

“That’s it, folks! Back on board!”

In the scramble of activity, I follow him onto the bus and return to my seat, deeply shaken by that one bizarre conversation. And yet, and yet. Oh god. As the bus moves smoothly back onto the road, I slip out of my seat and dart up the aisle. He’s moved to the window, glances up unsurprised when I drop into the seat beside him.

“What did they do to you?”

He arches a brow, cold and imperious despite all his shabbiness. “What?”

“They clearly fucked you up somehow or you wouldn’t be away from them for so long. And you wouldn’t be all weird about going back. What did they do?”

He’s not budging, instead watches my mouth with this slightest hint of sexual menace. My spine crawls again, heat curling in the pit of my stomach. It’s awful, I know, I shouldn’t be responding to such a threat. I should be fucking fleeing back to my seat like a good daughter and not engaging strange ominous men in too intimate conversation. 

“Can I see the letter?”

Now he’s shocked. The beautiful eyes dart towards his backpack where the wodge of yellow paper sticks out, and then back at me. “How did -- it’s not a letter.” He shifts upwards in the seat, gaze sharpening on me. “Is this something you do? Pry into people’s --”

“Tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

I don’t know why I’m being so brazen but it seems like the right course somehow. And anyway, he fucking started it, didn’t he, with that thing about running away. He crossed the line first.

He makes this little huff of amusement. Automatically reaches for his smokes as he sneers at me. “You don’t have anything to tell. Nothing’s ever happened to you.”

“Fuck you,” I say without blinking. “You have no idea what could have happened to me.”

“Oh yeah?” Those expressive brows, sandy brown and long, quirk as he leans back against the glass and taps out a cigarette. “Shock me with your childhood trauma.”

For a few awful seconds, I’m tempted to say every sensationalist thing I’ve read or heard.

“I don’t lie.” My voice stays level, keeping eye contact, perfectly neutral. “Nothing horrible has ever happened to me. My parents are good people, the town I grew up was fine. Nobody ever raped me or abused me or abandoned me. I’m a very, very lucky person.”

He watches me steadily. “Then what’s wrong with you?”

“I don’t know.” And my voice shakes on that. 

He hears it, glances away with something like unease. I blink away the tears and settle my shoulders against the seat, aware that he’s putting the cigarette packet back, aware that maybe he’s let me in now. We sit in silence for a while as the bus zooms on, the aircon keen and fresh. There’s a murmur of conversation way behind us, and I wonder how close we are to Key West, whether we’re in the area already. Who’s going to meet him at the depot?

“It’ll happen.”

He says it without malice, and then glances at me. “One day shit is going to happen to you, and you’re going to find out then whether you can survive it or not.”

“You survived,” I point out quietly.

His mouth curls, all cynicism and cold eyes. “You think?”

“You don’t think you have?”

The lines etch into his face as his gaze drops. “Depends who you ask, I guess.”

“Asking you,” I murmur, knowing by now that I’m utterly creepily fascinated by this traumatised man.

He smiles to himself, a glimpse of strange gentleness. “I don’t know. Maybe.” A glance out the window at the streaming scenery, his profile elegant and framed by the tufts of silver. “Sometimes it seems --” He gives me a quick sharp look, pinning me with attention. “Everyone feels like that, right? You think you’ve got it all together, you think everything’s finally working the way you want it to, that your life is fucking on track for once.” A narrow breath. “And then everything falls apart again. Because you’re not fucking over it. You never will be.”

I breathe in carefully, letting the silence weigh down his words and the raw hurt of them. There’s a child crying softly on the bus somewhere. Through the window I can see houses and buildings appear by the side of the road. A city welcome sign. We’re close now. There’ll be someone waiting for him, maybe one of the family that did this thing to him. 

“It’s my first time in Key West. I haven’t -- the nightlife’s supposed to be wild, right? Why don’t -- could you show me around? The good spots?”

He knows but he isn’t reacting. Merely watching with that intelligence and that sadness around his eyes and mouth. 

“It won’t take long,” I add. “I’m sure.”

_____________

We get off the bus before it reaches the depot. I have this sense of escape, of a whole series of events narrowly averted. He says he knows of a motel nearby that we can get a room at, and I agree, quietly thrilled and appalled. But he stays outside while I check in, and even when I go to the room, he says he’ll remain outside, that he’ll wait for me. I’m not sure I believe him. 

The room is hideous and way too kitschy for my liking but I don’t dawdle. Throw my bag onto the bed, grab a change of clothes and into the shower. He’s out in the carpark, smoking. I tell myself not to be upset if he’s gone when I come out, not to be disappointed. I know I will be.

But he is there, leaning against an old truck, backpack at his feet, listening to someone on the phone with his face grim and drawn. The breeze is messing up his hair, blowing open the loose dark shirt over a grey tank top. As I approach him, I realise all over again. He is the walking wounded and I must not get involved with him. 

“Oh my god,” I interrupt, appalled, “what’s your name?”

He disconnects the call, a spark of devilry in his eyes. “Danny.”

“Danny.” Such a boyish oddly sweet name. I tell him mine and his smile deepens. For a moment, we’re looking at each other like everything’s good and pure in the world, like we are beautiful people. My voice is warm with it. “So where are we going?”

He takes me to this bohemian sort of beach bar, strung with paper lanterns and open to the blue skies and crashing sea. It’s late afternoon and the music over the speakers is Fleetwood Mac, a small happy thing that makes me smile as I sit at the rough wooden counter beside him. There are a few people around us, casual tourists and local bums. The girl behind the counter is ridiculously hot, makes me uncomfortably self-conscious for a few seconds before I glance down at myself and remember I am fucking hot too. Dark skinny jeans that make my legs look really long, strappy sandals, hair fluffed out in the humidity, and a blue halter top with the bra that shocks even me with how lush it makes my breasts. Yeah, I can hold my own with the pretty young things of Florida.

As we order, my phone rings. “Sorry.” I fumble for it, swear a little inside when I see it’s my parents. He lights up a cigarette, his elbow bumping mine as he politely tries not to listen to my conversation.

“Yeah, no, everything’s fine. Yes, I’m here. It didn’t take that long. No, I’m just having dinner and then -- yeah, I know. I know. I’ll see you soon. Bye, love you.” 

Danny meets my gaze as I put the phone away, that sort of feline slyness to the way his lids flicker. “Heading back soon?”

I’m not sure I want to talk about that yet, can’t stop the irritated sigh. “Supposed to, yeah.”

He grins around the cigarette, teeth glinting feral. His energy is infecting me, I can feel it. A recklessness like the gulf breeze and the glittery water, like the attraction that sizzles between us. My own mouth curving, I sip at my drink when it arrives, and check in. Am I happy? Yes, actually I am, for now.

“Who was that on the phone for you?”

He shrugs, his broad hand wrapping around the beer. “John. He was --” Troubled blue eyes catching sunlight. “He was waiting to pick me up.”

“Mmm.” The defiance curls around us, children playing little power games. “Well,” I say flippantly, “so your arrival is a little delayed. So what?”

Danny laughs under his breath, cruel and lovely. “Yeah, so they’re used to it. Maybe I’ll be in time, maybe I won’t.”

Curious, I peer closer. “For what?” My god, he’s so beautifully freckled, like this gorgeous intricate painting, only all flesh and skin, colourful and lickable.

He flicks me a half smile from under his lashes, a little malicious. “Some fucking celebration for my father, for the hotel.” Warming to the subject, he leans both elbows on the counter, his body solid and male so close to me. “Family business, you know, the family Rayburn.”

We talk with a careless diffidence about his family and mine, about what our parents do. Talking around the trauma as if it’s under glass, something carefully contained for now. When our food arrives, he takes two bites and pushes it away with disgust. “This is shit, what the fuck? Hey!”

The girl behind the bar comes over, unimpressed already. And he lays into her about the meal, that he’s not paying for it. I’m not as unnerved as I probably should be, more curious about his sudden assertiveness. Danny reaches for my plate, tastes. “And this is fucking shit too! My son could cook this fish better, take it fucking away!”

She rolls her eyes but comps us the meal and brings us replacement burgers. By now, I’m thoroughly amused, watching as Danny samples both and declares them satisfactory. “You’re like Petruchio,” I chortle, struck with inspiration. “You know,” I add when he turns that sharp gaze on me, “from Taming Of The Shrew? This food’s not good enough, throw it out, no meat for any of us tonight.”

He snorts, his temper cooled. “They can’t get away with that shit,” he mutters, “but they do cause it’s fucking tourists, isn’t it?” He picks at the burger, watches me eat. 

Without looking at him, I say carefully, “You have a son.”

There’s a pause, heavy with thought, he vibrates beside me with so much turmoil. I know every question I ask risks him pulling away and fucking right off, I know that and maybe -- because? -- I ask them anyway. 

“Because if you can’t tell a stranger shit, who can you tell, right?” 

He laughs when I say that, his head ducking. I want to touch his hair so badly, take hold of it in great clutches and bring his face to mine, move his mouth where I want it. And maybe he catches some sign of that in my expression when he lifts his head, his smile flickering at the edges. 

“Right?” I grin back. His eyes gleam, responding to my conspiratorial tone. He’s so much taller than me but now sitting together, we’re shoulder to shoulder and I love this feeling of similarity, of being able to look him directly, unashamed about how beautiful I find him.

Danny inclines his head, tugging at the label on his beer bottle. “He’s seventeen. Nolan. He -- he deserves better, that kid. He hasn’t had it easy -- yeah, none of us have but --” he shrugs, trying to be flippant “-- he’s my kid. And he is talented, you know.” A slow smile that glows from inside. “I had to teach him a few things, a few little tricks but my god, he got it so fast. He -- he’s my kid and sometimes I can’t believe how fucking lucky I am to have him.”

And there comes the shadow. My heart aches as I watch his expression change. “Even if,” he mutters. “Fuck.” Abruptly, he pushes the heel of his hand against his eye, trying to hide the tears from me. I almost touch his arm, remember just in time that it’s too soon, I can’t possibly. 

“What?” I can’t hide how upset I am in response. “Tell me.”

He does, in half-broken phrases and so much resentment. About the restaurant and his friends, about his father and the family and their horrific conversations, the ultimatums and blackmail. The fire. I have to cover my mouth as I listen, almost unable to watch him as this story unravels in all its hideousness before me. But unable to look away because again it’s like no one else exists in the awful world but us, because suddenly I am irrevocably fiercely protective of this broken man I’ve only met a few hours ago. It’s impossible and absurd but I can’t deny it.

I don’t lie.

“So what are you going to do?” I ask eventually, hoarse.

Eyes closed, Danny shakes his head. “I have no fucking idea. I’m just --”

“You’re just going to be the prodigal son returned, fucking shit up.”

If he hears the censure in my tone, he chooses to ignore it. His mouth twisting, he picks away at the beer label. But I do understand, he’s trying to fix a terrible situation in the only way he knows. And all the ways he knows are fucked.

“Come on.” I push away from the bar, standing up. “Let’s go for a walk. I wanna see the water.”

___________

We walk along the sand as the sunshine leaks out of the world, the skies darkening blue above us. Talk about nothing and everything. Touching very occasionally, just hands brushing. Every now and then he stares out to sea, a terrible grief taking him away from me. But when I speak, he watches me with his own curiosity and I keep getting this sense of a gentle intelligent boy that maybe he was before the terrible thing happened, before the family turned him malevolent. 

As the air grows sticky and the sand radiates old heat up at us, he takes off the dark shirt and knots it around his waist. I’m trying not to notice how his shoulders gleam in the changing light, how the grey tank clings to his back. He’s making me so damned aware of my own body, of my breasts on display under the halter top, the lust hot and heavy, congealing my blood. And yes, damnit I want him to be as aware of me. He looks at my mouth when I talk, there’s a speculative gleam in his eye every now and then. And when his fingers brush mine, sometimes they catch, hooking around mine. It takes my breath away every time.

The strip of bars and clubs along the beach begin to light up in muted neon, begin to spill music and conversation as people gather and the Key West nightlife wakes. He sees me looking in that direction, says wryly, “Wanna dance?” 

“Oh god, yes.”

The dancefloor is outside, strung with the same paper lanterns, strobed with changing colours. But we head inside to the humid crowded bar where the music is deafening and obnoxious. Still my blood thrills in response. Sometimes doof doof has its uses. 

When I yell this at Danny, my lips up close at his ear, he laughs back, his eyes sparkling. Tequila shots burning down my throat, salt and lime and fumes, my skin all hot and not just because he’s resting his hand ever so delicately on the swell of my hip in dark denim, not just because I’m half circled by his warmth. I scan the crowd of drinking dancing people, jittery with the knowledge that if I turn my face just a little, if I tip it up, his mouth will be right there, slightly open and glistening. I can feel the weight of his attention, the simmering possibility.

“Who’s that?” There’s a guy off to one side trying to make eye contact, not with me, with Danny. “Do you know him?”

“Maybe.” Danny frowns, pulling away. “Be right back.”

In the chaos of colour and sound, they have a brief conversation and, when I angle my head, I catch the quick exchange of cash and something. I really am not as horrified as I should be, who even am I anymore? And it makes me want to laugh, gleeful at the thought of my parents’ appalled reaction. Everything I’ve been brought up not to do -- fuck, yes.

When Danny returns, I put my hand on the centre of his chest, sway into him with all the intensity of eyes and mouth and breasts and thighs. “Let me try.”

He knows exactly why, grins at me with that same feral understanding. In the weird green glow of the men’s toilets, he lays out the lines of white on the cistern, and guides me with a light hand on my hip. I push my hair back and do the first line which is the single weirdest sensation I’ve ever experienced. Oh god, I’m gonna die. But I do it anyway and kiss him right after, in the weird green light. His hand shapes to my hipbone, fingers lying along the small strip of skin above my jeans riding a little low, and he kisses me back with his sluttish wet mouth, kisses me like he would eat me. God, I want him to. 

Also, I’ve had it with the fucking bra. As he moves ahead of me out of the loos, one hand reaching back to clasp mine, I undo the back hooks and yank it out from under the halter top, cast it aside with no thought. Instant fucking relief, so much illicit sensuality, and I grab his hand, scooting closer, so excited to be in this, here and now.

The world turns brittle and glittery, so precious and powerful and easily broken, easily fucked. On the dancefloor, as the gulf breeze rushes in over the dark water and swirls the chaotic music around us, I make him touch me. The music pounds at us, pushing me back against his strong male body, his arms circling me completely now. Throbbing air, throbbing blood, I tip my head back and he puts his tongue in my mouth, flicks his fingertips across my nipples poking sharp and sensitive through the thin material. It makes me gasp and stumble against him, my face burning as he catches me and kisses me harder, closes his hands over my breasts. Oh god I want him to fuck me right here on the floor in the middle of everyone. Pull my jeans down, expose my cunt, and fuck me like some tawdry sex show.

We stumble out onto the beach, the fierce music reaching greedily after us. The skies arch dark and glittery above, and the sand is hard and cold beneath my sandals. I can’t stop kissing him, addicted so fast to the taste of him, the violated intimacy of his sharp wet mouth. His hands are so big on me, smoothing up my back, pushing my top up, but they cover my breasts perfectly, and he groans when he does that. Such a good satisfying sound. It makes me want to laugh, glorying in this power of flesh, my flesh over him, in his hands. I kiss him with teeth and tongue, dragging my fingers through his hair that’s as thick and warm as it looked, and he pulls me right up against him, too urgent to be gentle.

Salt on my skin and the taste of his mouth in my head, I go down his body, pushing the grey tank up over his pale abdomen, reaching for the buttons on the dark trousers. He braces his feet apart on the hard sand and I rise up on my knees, pull the flimsy top over my head, cast that aside too without a thought. The breeze hits my hot skin with so much cool, my nipples so tight they hurt. His cock gleams in the night air, smooth and so very hard in my hand. “Fuck,” he mutters above me, his hand coming to the side of my face. And I arch my back, slide his cock between my breasts, and suck the tip, wanting pure depravity, wanting him undone by me. He snarls, his hands brutal now with desperation, a choking sound in his throat because I have him hot and slick, I have him with tits and mouth and soon I’m going to have him with cunt too.

We fuck on the floor just inside the motel room, probably with the door still bouncing open, clothes scattered around us. In the neon dark, I’m on my hands and knees on the cheap rough carpet, breathless with joy and sensation because he’s holding me in place as he slams his cock into my throbbing cunt, and I’m going to scream, I know I’m going to scream when I come. It’s too raw, too intense, I feel like I’m going to splinter apart with so much violent pleasure, and he’s going to come inside me, all wet down my thighs. But he doesn’t. He hauls me half onto the bed, my naked breasts pressed against the side of the mattress, and he rubs his cock up against my asshole. “No, jesus!” I twist away, shocked. “Not --”

“Fine.” He flips me onto my back, sprawled across the bed, legs splayed open. His hair glints silver in the light from the carpark, and his eyes glitter dark blue as he spits on his palm and rubs my cunt open again. I’m moaning and writhing under his hands, pulling him to me. “In, in, I want you in,” I’m chanting and then arch and scream when his fingers push into me. He finds my sweet spot half by accident, I think, but he knows immediately that he has. Leans down and bites at my mouth, laughs on a breath when I bite back at him. “You’re a filthy little fuck, aren’t you?” Danny whispers, and drives his cock hard into me. He likes that I cry out, likes to fuck me without mercy, his face so close to mine, his arm curved around my head, his bare shoulder blocking out the light. He’s so close, so deep in me he suffocates me with so much darkness, all poison and toxic black crawling over us. I think I’m hallucinating, I know I’m not imagining the smell and heat and brutality of his body, of him fucking and biting me until I’m coming and coming, struggling against him, struggling to get closer to him. He holds my face between both hands, his eyes all dark light, and I can’t see anything but him, can’t feel anything but blistering terrible pleasure, a dark glorious annihilation that goes on and on until I am thoroughly destroyed.

_____________

We fuck on and off all night, jittery with chemical desire. He fucks me hard and smokes afterwards, so much a series of delicious cliches. I know I’m going to be so sore when we finally stop but I don’t care. His skin sticks to mine, his hands so greedy and beautiful on me. In the snarled sheets, he sucks at my breasts and buries his face against my sternum, his shoulders bare and sharp in the dimness. It reminds me again how broken he is, how I cannot and must not but I have, haven’t I? I wrap my arms around him, urging his mouth to mine, and he slides his cock into me, watching me wince and respond to his pace.

At one point I’m curled on my side in the dark, shaking a little with the weirdness rushing through my blood. I never thought it would feel like this, that I’d be so aware of how unnatural this high is, like my body is not entirely mine but fiercely glad for it anyway. The bathroom light clicks off, he’s coming back to bed and I’m already anticipating the warmth and loveliness of his naked body against mine.

“Here.” The bedside lamp comes on, intrusive and unpleasant. I flinch away but he’s already at my back, finding my clutching hand with his. And when I finally focus, it’s on a sheaf of yellow papers he holds between us. Everything goes quiet in my head. I stare at him, at the elegance of his sombre face, the blue grey eyes that move from the paper to my face, steady and serious. He knows what he’s doing. And I can’t not respond.

It’s not a letter. It’s a speech. So full of hurt and rage and so much vileness that I feel choked by his toxic blackness all over again. But there he is, lying against me, all vulnerable and naked and warm, flesh and anxiety, watching me read this expression of everything he hates and loves about his family. When I finish reading, breathless with pain, I turn to him. “What did they **_do_**?”

He tells me and it makes me cry, so angry and so hurt for him. I want to kill his father with my bare hands. I tell Danny he never deserved any of that. He knows but it still makes his face tremble. So I hold him and ask him about Sarah. “Tell me how she was, how she would have been.”

We talk and doze and fuck. Only it doesn’t feel like fucking anymore. I can’t name it, I don’t want to, it’s absurd and too painful to name. He strokes my face with his fingertips, tells me secrets that bind me to him. His mouth is soft and vulnerable, the lower lip just that little bit crooked. I kiss his mouth and know I will probably always be crying for him. For everything I’ve been spared that he wasn’t.

In the eerie light of dawn, I sit naked on the side of the bed and watch him sleep. I can’t change him, I know I shouldn’t even try, that damaged men can’t be saved from the hurt they do themselves. If I try, he’ll take everything I have and leave me with nothing, not even my self-respect. He’ll swallow every bit of light and hope in me until I can’t even imagine what my life would be without the darkness and weight of him occupying every space in my world. I cannot rescue him and deliver him into some fairytale of goodness and peace.

And yet I’m going to try, aren’t I?

He sleeps as the morning light changes across the patterned curtains, and I watch, run my fingertips ever so lightly across the smooth contour of his shoulder and back. He could still go back to them, continue on the path he had begun before I interrupted. And what would happen if he did? To him? To Nolan? That boy who sounds so awfully like his father, and maybe neither of them see it but it must be so obvious to everyone else. He can’t want the same toxic family for his son. 

And I can’t go back, can I?

I crawl back into bed with him, snuggle into the breathing warmth of his body. Staving off the world for a little while longer. My dreams bleed into his, I don’t remember them but I wake with this sense of complete entanglement. Maybe I dream for him, maybe I could every night.

When I do wake properly, the sun is bright on the curtains. I crack open my eyes and groan, “Oh my god, that was such an expensive bra!”

Danny laughs against my throat, his broad hand covering my right breast. “Buy you another one.” 

I don’t say, “Yeah right, with what money?” And anyway, he’s sucking on my nipple and going down my body now. Spreads my thighs and uses his wet mouth on my wet sore cunt. I check in, am I happy? Oh yes, definitely, oh my lord yes. My hands in the glorious dark silver mess of his hair, I pull at the curls until they tangle smooth around my fingers, and moan at the ceiling. 

Maybe it will work out. 

We’ll take the bus back to Miami. I’ll do the stupid thing and withdraw my savings and give it to him to pay off the bad men. And maybe we can leave Florida, go across the country, maybe all the way to San Francisco. We could get little jobs there, find a little apartment, and send Nolan money to come stay with us. Maybe eventually we could get together enough money for another restaurant, and this time it won’t burn down. This time it’ll be father and son together, healing and happy, a new family. Leave all the toxic blackness behind.

My parents will never understand but they will never abandon me. Or him.

One day we might even leave America to discover the world beyond.

**Author's Note:**

> Yep, the checking in of emotional state is something I got from hollyhark's Children Wake Up series which is in my bones, man, my bones.


End file.
